All posts tagged ‘Legoland’

As of two days ago, it has been 80 years since Ole Kirk Kristiansen started a carpentry business in Billund, Denmark — a company that would eventually turn into the Lego Group we all know and love. As part of the celebrations, Lego has made this short animated film. It chronicles the ups and downs Ole, his sons, and now grandson have gone through since the carpentry business starting failing in the mid 1930s and Ole turned to making high-quality wooden toys, including a disastrous fire in the factory during World War II, the introduction of the first plastic toys and bricks in late 40s, another factory fire, the construction of an airport to help with shipping and eventually the first Legoland theme park.

The animation isn’t quite up to Pixar standards, but it’s better made than most kids’ shows these days and is a touching story of a family building a successful worldwide business from virtually nothing. Could Ole be the ultimate GeekDad? Be sure to watch out for the nice little in-jokes about the creation of the name and if you’re interested in finding more about the history of Lego, they have a nice timeline on the corporate part of their site.

On a rainy Friday last week (and there have been many of those here recently) my daughter, her ‘boyfriend’ (both aged 6) and I all took part in an attempt to break the world record for the tallest Lego Tower, at the Legoland Windsor Park in the UK. The previous record of 31.9 meters has only stood for 3 months and was set by Lego itself as part of its 80th birthday celebrations in Seoul, South Korea, outside the Olympic stadium.

Building section 56

The build had been going on all week so when we arrived the tower was easily visible from the car park, already over the 20 meter mark. We joined in with the crew under one of two tents and set to work on level 56 of the pre-designed sections – basically a two stud wide, two plate thick cross shape, all glued together. The actual build was a complete free-for-all, with about 10 kids crowded around the cross, all slapping 2×4 bricks left, right, and center – a complete contrast to the organized solo efforts of the last Lego world we broke, a massive Star Wars Mosaic.

Canada's first Legoland Discovery Center is expected to open in spring, 2013

Lego geeks in Canada have been abuzz with the news last week that a Legoland Discovery Center (or Centre, since this is Canada) is being built in Vaughan, just north of Toronto. According to the press release from Merlin Entertainments (which operates four existing Legoland Discovery Centers in the US, as well as the Legoland theme parks in Florida and California), the 34,000 square foot attraction will open in the spring of 2013.

While it’s not quite on the scale of the Florida/California theme parks, this is a welcome development. The Samsonite factory in Stratford, Ontario, manufactured Lego bricks for distribution in North America starting in 1961 (the US got its own plant in 1965) and continued to manufacture and distribute Lego in Canada through to 1986. I grew up in Stratford and fondly remember the factory, because with a factory comes an outlet. Sometimes Lego bricks would show up at our house by the bagful.

However, despite its early roots in Canada, the Great White North has been largely bereft of an official Lego presence since then. There were stores that specialized in Lego scattered around various shopping centers, but that wasn’t quite the same as the real thing. We’ve had the occasional Lego store open in recent years — the first official Lego Store in Canada opened in Calgary in 2010 — but to really enjoy the Lego experience required a significant road trip. So the announcement that construction on a Legoland Discovery Center will be breaking ground this summer is big news. And who knows, the way we’re progressing here (Lego themed outlet stores to official Lego stores to Discovery Center), maybe a Legoland North is in the cards. A Director with Merlin is quoted in the announcement as saying: “In fact, this is just the beginning of Merlin’s introduction into Canada, and we have already identified two other potential new sites.”

That probably refers to additional Discovery Centers, but one can hope.

Each Legoland Discovery Center features an exhibit that includes iconic buildings from the local area, so count on a Lego CN Tower dominating the Vaughan location. There’s no note of this in the press release, but the Toronto Star says a contest will be held this fall to find a master builder from the Toronto area to take on the design of the exhibit. So, Toronto area Lego enthusiasts: get out your bricks and your cameras and start practicing.

This past weekend, a new Legoland Discovery Center opened in Kansas City. The indoor attraction, which features rides, activities, party rooms, and lots of Lego bricks is just the fourth in US and the seventh in the world. Visitors will want to block out two to three hours to get the most out of the LDC.

At last, the galaxy far, far away has come to Legoland Windsor. Just over a year after the Star Wars Miniland opened in Legoland California (read Dave Banks’ excellent write up of that one here) the Lego master builders have recreated all the same models again and brought them to UK, and to celebrate the opening of the Star Wars Miniland Experience, they had a special weekend-long, Star Wars-themed party and called it the Star Wars Invasion.

Originally, I hadn’t planned to go along as weekends at Legoland can get very busy, plus we’d already been to the new Harry Potter Studio Tour that Saturday, but it was lovely sunny morning when we woke up on the Sunday, so the munchkin and I decided to just do it – annual passes and living close by are great when making spur of the moment decisions! After an initial downer — leaving my cash sticking out of the cash machine and driving away (D’oh!) — we arrived nice and early, skipped past all the lines (another perk of the Merlin Pass) and headed straight for the new attraction.

The Entrance

The whole thing is housed inside the old Lego Racers arcade game section, which is both good and bad. The Racers game was getting very tired as it had been there from the beginning, and being indoors means you (and those precious millions of bricks) are safe from the unpredictable British weather. The downside is of course that is very hard to get decent photos of all the cool models, so apologies for the grainy, blurry or bleached out shots!
Over the doorway is an oversized Lego Millennium Falcon which leads you down to the first of the seven scenes. As far as I can tell they are the same as the ones in California, taking in all six movies and the Clone Wars:

Clone Wars: A battle scene from Christophsis between droids and troopers

Episode I: The Theed Royal Palace and hangar on Naboo and the droid invasion

Episode II: The Geonosian execution arena and a battle scene, with gunships and hellfire droids

I am starting a new prototyping lab in Huntsville, Alabama, based on the fab lab model. I’ve dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur and have done a fair amount of research on the topic. But this is my first attempt at starting a business. Here is where I document weekly my mistakes and successes in creating a business from scratch.

Last week I took my family on vacation. We sailed on a Disney Cruise and stopped by LegoLand on the way home. While we were on the cruise I tried very hard not to think about my day job or starting this new enterprise. Instead I took a few books. One was Neal Gabler’s biography of Walt Disney. I thought it was appropriate given where I was, and I enjoy reading biographies. I like to learn what is was that made these people so successful, what it was that drove them, and what pitfalls they were able to avoid, and which ones tripped them up.

I was struck by the amount of adversity Disney had to overcome. You’d expect the most famous American entertainer to have a charmed life, but you’d be wrong. A childhood of near poverty and hard work led to a couple failed business ventures in Kansas City before Walt left for California to join his brother Roy and start the mega corporation we know today. Even then he was routinely panned by movie critics, competitors and even his own employees. And yet he persevered.

Legoland Florida had just opened for the day, and we were hot on the trail of the park’s retail manager. We had reason to believe he had the much-desired mobster minifig, and if we could find him, that minifig would be ours.

Trading minifigs is a big part of the fun of visiting Legoland, although many park-goers don’t know about the tradition. Guests who bring a minifig from home (or buy one in the park) can trade it for any of the minifigs park staffers wear on their nametags. Fellow guests may trade with you if they choose to, but staffers are more or less compelled to surrender their minifig when asked.

There’s a bit of an unwritten law among Lego geeks that gluing a kit together is taboo —unless you’re creating something for use in Legoland, where presumably, large scale models that could be pulled apart would pose a danger to visitors, not to mention a lot of maintenance work and rebuilding at the end of the day. Building the kits by the instructions is fun, but it gets better when you pull them apart and the pieces are added to the collective Lego bin where imagination takes over. Can’t do that if the model is permanently stuck together. My kids’ playroom has a massive tub of Lego pieces that has assimilated everything from the Hogwarts castle to the Batmobile and countless Star Wars sets.

Four lightsabers and he can’t even take on a pair of common house cats… Photo by Brad Moon

However, I have a General Grievous kit I received as a birthday gift a few years back; once assembled, the General assumed a place on my desk, where he has remained. At the time, I wrote about some concern about how this rather fragile model would fare should one of the cats decide to take him on. The dogs I’m not worried about —they respect my stuff. The cats are another matter and seem to take great delight in reminding me that they have free reign throughout my office. In the past few years the General has been deliberately pushed over the edge several times, once smashing so thoroughly that I pretty much had to disassemble him back to his 1,085 constituent pieces and start from scratch. Sometime during our recent vacation, the cats struck again, defiling my office and, unbeknownst to our house sitter, sent the Lego model plummeting over the edge of my desk once again. The damage wasn’t as complete as previous times, but I’m beginning to tire of this war of wills. The way I see it, I have several choices:

Declare the cats the victors, put him back together again and move him to a high shelf.

Grit my teeth, put him back together again and put him back on the desk.

Declare the cats the victors, pull him completely apart and add the pieces to the Lego bin.

Pwn the cats by gluing General Grievous together and putting him back on the desk.

I don’t like the first option. While many people loathe the character (and everything else to do with Episodes I-III), General Grievous has grown on me —I don’t want to stick him up out of sight. Besides, height is no guarantee of safety. These are Ninja cats we’re talking about. One of them once disappeared for a day, then dropped through a ceiling tile in the basement, taking out one of my printers during the landing. The second option is getting old. Sooner or later, pieces are going to be lost or I’m going to get so fed up I’ll resort to option three without thinking it through. Option three is a definite “no.” Keeping this kit out of the communal Lego collection is hardly depriving my kids and I know that once he’s in there, the general will never see the light of day intact and in his original form —kind of like the original Star Wars films. The first three options also involve acknowledging the superiority of the cats, something that I refuse to do. I’ll clean their litter, buy the organic cat food, vacuum the hair, mop up the furballs and foot the vet bills, but they are not the boss of me.

Which brings me to option four. I’m thinking it’s time to throw out the rulebook and bring out the glue.

Legoland Florida officially opens Saturday, October 15, 2011, but I was lucky enough to get a recent behind-the-scenes tour.

Prediction: Lego fans: Prepare to go crazy at Legoland Florida.

First, the park is beautiful. Amazingly detailed giant Lego sculptures are everywhere. Secondly, the rides and attractions are highly interactive. We cannot wait to try out the dark shooter ride and experience the 4D films! Third, the Lego brand comes to life throughout the park in every detail from employee nametags through an entire section of the park built from Lego bricks (Miniland USA). Fourth, can you say bricks, kits, and minifigs for sale?

When Legoland Florida opens, it will be the world’s largest Legoland. Legoland Florida also boasts a Lego-themed ski show (pirates have taken over the shores of beautiful Lake Eloise). Legoland Florida is dripping with Lego geekiness. In fact, it’s difficult to predict who will enjoy the park more: geek parents or Lego geeklets.

That’s right, your eyes are not deceiving you, the master builders in the UK’s Legoland in Windsor have built a little diorama to celebrate a little event that you might have heard about — the wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton — a woman who was once a commoner such as yourselves!

It’s probably the best thing come of the (media) event if the year, certainly better than the extra bank day holiday we’re all getting over here. As a stay at home dad and freelancer, I get nothing out of that. Neither does my wife, as she runs her own business. Add to that, the fact that they’re trying to to steal our thunder by getting married on the same day we did, and I’m glad we’re going away for the whole weekend. Let’s just hope they have better luck than another famous couple who wed on the 29th April: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun!

The bank holiday will cost British businesses nearly three billion pounds in lost man hours — except of course those who deal in party food/booze and Union Jack bunting who are making a killing — the bride-to-be’s parents included. Sure, they need some of that cash to cover the costs of the actual wedding, but let’s not forget the extra cost to the taxpayer for all the additional security and transport — around 20 million last I heard.

Let us not dwell on the countless number of televisual treats lined up to get everyone ‘excited’ about the event. The BBC has been running hour-long shows celebrating every royal wedding they can dig out of the archives. Schedules have been cleared for blanket coverage of the day itself and people have already started camping out to get the best views; it’s almost like Apple is releasing a new iPad! You crazy Yanks have even made a TV movie telling the exciting tale of the courtship and there’s a plethora of apps for your iDevice to enhance the experience.

OK, rant over, sorry about that. I just wanted you all to know that, despite want you may be seeing on the news, not everyone in the UK is excited by the whole thing. What I wanted to concentrate on here is the fantastic little details that Lego’s builders put into the minilands.